I remember playing the first game in 1990 at a family friend's house. I was stunned by the fact that a platformer existed on a computer! I have since downloaded the Complete Pack on Steam and am looking forward to diving into it. I now see that Keen Dreams is on there too so I'll have to snag that as well.
(btw any decent recommendations for DOS games that are on Steam but NOT GOG.com?)
I had Secret of the Oracle growing up. I loved it. It holds special sentimental value to me because it was my first foray into DOS. I still remember typing...
> C:
> cd games
> keen4e.exe
I of course had no idea what those commands meant, but I memorized them because I knew it meant being able to play Keen!
Mother Effin Commander Keen! That stuff was great. Agreed, Keen Dreams leaves much to be desired, but still.
Gettin all those inchworms together to create the foot to go to the temple with the fake oracle... I don't remember all the other easter eggs, but there were a bunch.
I was obsessed with the Commander Keen games when I was in high school (they were already old and largely forgotten by most folks).
I thought the original trilogy was fairly weak and I'm pretty sure I only beat episodes 2 and 3 once. But I played the hell out of all the others! Keen Dreams was "okay" and I think of it as more of a spin-off/side-story than anything else. But I still played it at least twice. I'd love to revisit the series for a Together Retro... maybe next year that will happen.
I was a big fan of the Dopefish from Episode IV: Secret of the Oracle and actually own one of the ultra-rare Dopefish mugs and had my mom make me a customize Dopefish hat.
The one Commander Keen thing I'm not a fan of: the Game Boy Color game. I actually bought a GBC just to play it. Unfortunately it's so bad as to be NEAR UNPLAYABLE. Every few years I think to myself "why did I never beat this game?" and then I play a couple levels and am reminded.
So here I am on my last day of vacation, and after I cooked up a couple of chops, dogs and made a good steak on the grill, is it wrong to have a full tummy after I fed my family and play some nes while I consume beer for the rest of the day? I say nea nea.
Desoldering without that nice Hakko station I used to have access to is a pain. Ugh. Well, I'm 2/3 through with the Genesis recap. Had to desolder one cap I put in so far, got in a hurry and put a 10uF where there was supposed to be a 1uF.
Once I verify it still works, then I'll look at doing the S-Video mod. Should be interesting. I'd love to be able to play the Genny with nice visuals without having to hook up that SCART-Component converter. So assuming this all works, I suspect there's some Genesis gaming in my near future.
Well, the good news is that I finished the recap, and the system works just fine. Yay!
The bad news is that it didn't fix the audio crackle. Doh! Looks like I'll be applying the S-Video mod to a different Genesis.
Still, not like I got nothing out of the deal. I got some soldering practice back in, and improved my ability to use that little suction desoldering iron. It's garbage compared to that Hakko workstation, but I made it work.
So I need a break from that. Time to find something new to play!
Those desoldering irons work well enough for through hole pads. They fail when a PCB doesn't have pads but vias for through hole components. That fucking sucks! Not so much for caps or resistors, but trying to remove a DIP IC from those things really sucks. NES PCBs and early SNES are like that. It's a nightmare using only those cheap desoldering irons. But yeah, I'm not gonna have the money for something better any time soon.
Speaking of brushing up on soldering skills... I sweat some pipes today for the first time in years. My brother volunteered me to install a new shower body for some close friends of his girlfriend.
When I got to actually doing it, I got a little nervous. Mostly because I hadn't done it in a while. I never had any real training for doing it. I knew how to solder electronics, and I saw someone sweat pipes and understood the principles, so I decided I knew how to do it lol. I've done it a few times for myself and family over the years. Never ran into a problem. But doing it for someone I didn't really know (friends of friends) I was a little nervous being out of practice and all. But I got the new shower body installed and pressure tested it... no leaks!
I almost always enjoy soldering electronics, but I forgot what a pain in the ass soldering pipes is. I'm gonna have to check out that pex shit that every seems to be using these days.
